


Smash Lampjaw And The Egg Nog

by A_Damned_Scientist



Category: Farscape
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-20
Updated: 2018-01-20
Packaged: 2019-03-07 09:27:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13431822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Damned_Scientist/pseuds/A_Damned_Scientist
Summary: “Welcome back to Alien Visitation with me, your host, R Wilson Monroe.”“Suppose you tell us what you saw that night, Mr Ryder?” Monroe asked, all smiles as he adjusted his jacket slightly for comfort.





	Smash Lampjaw And The Egg Nog

**Author's Note:**

> The challenge was to bring back a character that was thought to be dead. 
> 
> Spoilers: TF and ACOD spoilers, for what it’s worth. Nothing really to warn of beyond that. 
> 
> A brief explanation about the title: Dave Ryder is the main character in a rather awful Sci Fi movie called Space Mutiny. This film was lampooned by the MST3K people, who suggested loads of alternate names for his character (or was it the actor playing him)? One of these was Smash Lampjaw, which seemed to me to be the perfect name for my central character, a character who seems to exist solely to be killed by the Skreeth (and drink egg nog, I’m not sure which is the worse fate). However, it is too silly a name to use except in the title, hence, Dave Ryder.
> 
> Dedicated to my muse, Xena the cat, who passed away the day before I originally posted this on TF (12th June 2014) aged 17 1/3rd and to the memory of the many happy hours we spent together watching Farscape.
> 
> Thanks: Vinegardog for betaing and support.
> 
> Disclaimer: Farscape doesn’t belong to me, yadda yadda.

Smash Lampjaw And The Egg Nog 

 

“Welcome back to Alien Visitation with me, your host, R Wilson Monroe.” The view cut away to a different angle and the screen showed Monroe, smiling in a lopsided, avuncular manner, turning to face the new camera. “Before the break we had our first glimpse at the devastation wreaked on Christmas Eve at Jack Crichton’s Florida home. What, viewers, could possibly have been the cause of such incredible scenes of destruction? Could it have been the alien visitors, or was it perhaps something that came with them? Something, or some dark secret, that they kept hidden from us? Well, tonight we are joined by someone who was actually there when it all happened. Special Agent, retired, Dave Ryder.” The camera cut away to show a slim unremarkable, fair-haired man with matching beard walking onto the stage set. Monroe half stood, extended an arm, shook hands and gestured for his guest to take the empty seat opposite.

“Suppose you tell us what you saw that night, Mr Ryder?” Monroe asked, all smiles as he adjusted his jacket slightly for comfort. 

“Well,” Ryder began, confident enough although clearly unused to the correct protocol for the situation he now found himself in. “it was late in the evening on Christmas Eve. Colonel and Commander Crichton had been at a reception and I was their escort back to the Colonel’s residence.”

“You were on your own?” Monroe frowned as though in disbelief.

“There were other agents not far away. To be honest, there was some question as to whether they needed security at all: I knew that both of them had expressed the opinion it was unnecessary…”

“But they were wrong?” It was more a statement than a question from the sardonic Monroe.

“You could say that. Anyway, we were chatting and I saw them, the Colonel and his son, into the house. Colonel Crichton kindly offered me a drink while they greeted Olivia Crichton and Officer Sun….”

“Officer Sun was there already?” Monroe asked straight into the camera, arching a quizzical eyebrow. 

“Yeah, it wasn’t really a surprise, not to me: We passed the agent who’d brought her round, he was waiting out in the street…”

“What do you think she was doing there?” Monroe pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

“I couldn’t say. She was all dressed up in her own getup, gun and all. I remember thinking I hadn’t seen her dressed like that before.”

“Couldn’t say?” Monroe repeated the words back with careful, slow enunciation, making it almost an accusation of ‘couldn’t or wouldn’t.’

“Well, I sort of got the impression there was a little tension between her and the Commander. Like she’d come round to talk to him about something.”

“How could you tell?”

“You just can, sometimes, can’t you?” Monroe grunted in faintly amused agreement. “I mean, she looked just like my ex-wife when she was about to go off on one…” Monroe chuckled in sympathy.

“Anyway, the Colonel led me through to the kitchen with his daughter, Miss Crichton.”

“Leaving Officer Sun and Commander Crichton alone in the family room?”

“Yeah.”

“Didn’t that strike you as odd?”

“Not really. Like I said, it looked like they needed a private conversation.”

“Did you hear any strange noises after you left the room? Raised voices?”

“No, nothing, really.”

“So then what happened?”

“Well, I spilt egg nog on my hand and stayed in the kitchen cleaning up and drying off while the Colonel and Miss Crichton returned to the family room. I was just about to follow. And that’s when it all happened.”

“What happened, Mr Ryder?”

“Well, Livvy, Miss Crichton, she screamed, and then the Colonel shouted her name. I rushed in, drawing my weapon, and there was this…. this thing…”

“Thing?” Monroe arched an eyebrow to encourage further elaboration.

“Big, green…. Humanoid… like a mean-looking Grinch… standing right in the middle of the room, attacking Livvy, then the Colonel… it knocked him down…”

“And what did you do?”

“Well, I emptied my weapon into it. Didn’t seem to make a scratch. Although I did get its attention. The thing picked me up and threw me through the wall…”

“THROUGH the wall?”

“Yeah. Brick wall. That’s about the last thing I remember. Except I think Officer Sun had her weapon drawn by then and was firing at it, too.”

“So, you were unconscious for most of what followed?”

“Yeah, I mean, being thrown through a wall’ll do that to a guy, y’know? Doctors told me later I was lucky Livvy was there – she’s a nurse, and she stabilised me until the EMTs arrived. Agent Roe, he was waiting outside for Officer Sun, he wasn’t so lucky. Grinch must have….” Dave grimaced and faltered.

“I see,” Monroe nodded sagely as the camera returned to him, his face betraying both sympathy and disappointment that that was all the testimony that Dave Ryder could supply. The view cut to another camera angle, another slight turn from Monroe to face the audience.

“When the emergency services arrived, there was no sign of the green-skinned alien described by Agent Ryder,” Monroe intimated with the merest hint of a suggestion that of course there would have been no sign of the creature. “However, Agent Roe was dead outside, his neck broken, Colonel Crichton’s home was in ruins and General Ka D’Argo was present, along with his ship and the alien female, Chi-Anna.” Monroe paused and gave a rueful smile. ”So what should we make of it all? What, if anything, were the crew of Moya not telling us about themselves and their….”

“Oh, turn it off, Dave,” Olivia Crichton asked, crinkling her face to show her displeasure at Monroe’s not-so-subtle allusions that the crew of Moya were in some way implicated in the attack of the Skreeth.

Dave Ryder sighed and kissed her gently on the cheek before pulling her into a tighter hug on their large, overstuffed white leather couch. “But, honey, I wanna see it all…” he resisted, maintaining a firm grip on the TV remote.

Olivia punched him lightly on the arm. “You’ve seen what he did in the previous shows…. He just twists everything… “

“Well, I know that now…” Dave protested, leaving his ‘I didn’t know that when I agreed to be interviewed by him’ hanging implied but unspoken.

“Well, I’m gonna get a drink, then,” Olivia sighed, resolving that if she had to see the latest instalment of Alien Visitation through to the end then she would do so fortified with alcohol. She fidgeted, detaching herself from his embrace as a prelude to standing. “You want something, Dave? Egg nog, perhaps?”

 

The End.


End file.
